Site cuissardes 1968 I SPECIAL SHOW BARDOT

DVD "divine bardot" (mercury) incluant 24 chansons dont harley davidson et comic strip et des séquences inédites ; 27€ 23rd march'04, world release of DVD "divine bardot" including videos of bb in thigh high boots taken from "bardot show" ; 27€

Toujours, l'on soupire après la splendeur de l'actrice ou les charmes de la chanteuse, après ces années de rêve pendant laquelle BB fut l'astre mondial de la féminité. Universal et l'INA rééditent donc dans un DVD exceptionnel, Divine BB, trente-quatre chansons telles que filmées pour la télévision : quatre titres dans Bonne année Brigitte en 1961 (dont Stanislas chanté avec les Frères Jacques), dix dans A vos souhaits Brigitte pour le nouvel an 1963, le légendaire Brigitte Bardot Show en 1968 (avec Comic Strip et Bonnie and Clyde en duo avec Gainsbourg ou l'inédit La Bise aux hippies en duo avec Sacha Distel et Gainsbourg à la guitare) et Le Soleil de ma vie chanté avec Distel en 1973. Outre quelques chansons filmées qui n'avaient pas été diffusées à l'époque, Universal a exhumé un documentaire de la BBC sur les coulisses du tournage du Brigitte Bardot Show... Ces deux heures de musique et d'images sont évidemment un régal, qui montrent Bardot non seulement en icône sixties mais aussi – et c'est plus inattendu – en guitariste appliquée ou en interprète audacieuse

“For Harley Davidson I wore my own thigh boots !”

En 1967, Gainsbourg, à l'occasion du nouveau show télé offert par la 2ème chaine et bardot pour les fêtes de fin d'année, lui sertit des gemmes qui allaient entrer dans l'histoire dont le légendaire "harley davidson". Ce show TV cristalisa chez des milliers de kids leurs premières émotions face à la féminité. D'autant que s'il n'existait pas de magnétoscope, "Salut les copains" avait largement publié des photos du show : bb chevauchant sa harley en mini-robe et cuissardes, bb en combinaison parme, cuissardes et perruque pour "comic strip", bb en robe metallique paco rabanne pour "contact"...IIn 1967, serge gainsbourg polished a new germs for brigitte, songs that would also go down in history : the graphic "bonnie & clyde", the legendary "harley davidson" ; this show crystallised the first feelings related to feminity of thousands of kids ; in those days there was no VCRs, but Salut les copains magazine published a wide choice of photos from the show : bardot astride her harley in a mini-dressand leather thigh boots, bardot wearing a metallic tunic by paco rabanne for "contact", bardot clad in a mauve jumpsuit with high thigh boots for "comic strip"...

> rencontre avec bb april '04 bb interview, in french only

Rencontre le 12 avril 2004 dans les bureaux parisiens de la Fondation Bardot, avec l'ancienne chanteuse ; article paru dans Le Figaro du 13 avril 2004, extraits :

- Vous produire dans ces shows télévisés, était-ce faire le même métier qu'actrice ?

- Oh non ! Figurez-vous que les shows télévisés, je les faisais gratuitement. C'était mon cadeau aux téléspectateurs, je les prenais comme une récréation. Je trouvais ça rigolo. Il faut dire que j'emmerdais bien tout le monde : je ne venais que quand je voulais, je faisais ce que je voulais, puisque je n'avais pas de contrat. Le dernier show (le Brigitte Bardot Show en 1968, ndlr) a été plus sérieux : on travaillait la journée, comme pour un film. Mais, pour les premiers, Bonne année Brigitte et A vos souhaits, je tournais la nuit, après être sortie du studio où je faisais des films. On commençait à travailler vers 9-10 heures le soir et si j'étais en forme, nous allions jusqu'à 3 ou 4 heures du matin.

“J'allais dans ma garde-robe prendre ce qui correspondait à la chanson : pour Harley Davidson, ce sont mes cuissardes.”

- A les revoir ainsi, on est souvent frappé par la modernité et la fantaisie de ces shows.

- C'était très artisanal, en fait. Je n'avais pas d'habilleuse, pas de maquilleuse, pas tout ce fourbi-là. Tout ce que je porte dans les chansons est à moi. J'avais des perruques que Dessange m'avait données, et j'allais dans ma garde-robe prendre ce qui correspondait à la chanson : pour Harley Davidson, ce sont mes cuissardes, mon gilet et ma blouse. Dans Everybody Loves My Baby, que je chante en anglais avec une robe à franges, tout est à moi – j'ai même encore le fume-cigarette. Pour Comic Strip, ce sont mes cuissardes, des maillots de danseuse, une petite cape de chez Réal, une perruque noire et des chaînes dorées qui pendent encore dans ma salle de bains. Il n'y avait aucune contrainte et ça m'amusait. On travaillait dans la joie et ça se sent.

- Le travail en studio d'enregistrement, pour les disques, était-il aussi détendu ?

- Ça, ce n'était pas toujours détendu. Je n'étais pas une professionnelle. J'avais beau avoir répété plus ou moins avec Claude Bolling, j'envoyais tout promener de temps en temps. J'essayais de faire les choses le mieux possible mais je les prenais un peu à la rigolade – et lui pas du tout. Il me faisait recommencer des passages qui n'étaient pas dans le tempo et moi, ça m'emmerdait. J'aimais tout faire d'un coup.

- Vous n'avez jamais été tentée de chanter sur scène ?

- Ça, jamais ! Je n'ai jamais fait de théâtre de ma vie. Le trac me paralyse et, même maintenant, je ne peux pas le vaincre. En revanche, il m'est arrivé de faire la manche à Saint-Tropez, place des Lices avec des copains. Nous étions, une amie et moi à la guitare et les garçons jouaient des maracas, des tambourins. J'avais un foulard sur la tête, des lunettes noires. Des gens disaient que la guitariste ressemblait à Brigitte Bardot mais on a ramassé trois sous et un bouton de culotte quand on a passé le chapeau. Je ne le faisais pas pour que les gens me reconnaissent, ce n'était pas un show dans une salle, avec ce que ça comporte de mise en scène et d'applaudissements.

“Pour Comic Strip, ce sont mes propres cuissardes et mon maillot de danseuse.”

When Serge Gainsbourg died in his bedroom on March 2 1991, a month short of his 63rd birthday, France went into mourning. Brigitte Bardot, who had been his lover, gave a eulogy; President Mitterrand, who wasn't, gave him one too. He was "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire", said the head of state. "He elevated song to the level of art." Flags were flown at half-mast - a less fitting symbol for the priapic pop genius than the bottles of whisky and Pastis and packets of Gitanes cigarettes left as tributes by the crowds who descended, à la Princess Di, on the police barricades erected around his home on the Rue de Vernueil. "Ask anyone in Paris," said Nicolas Godin of the French band Air, "and they can remember what they were doing when they heard Gainsbourg had died. It was such a shock. Because he was always there, part of our culture. He was always on the television doing something crazy. He was a poet. He was a punk. And he wanted to fuck Whitney Houston."

His lyrics were mind-boggling exercises in Franglais, triple entendres and rhythmic, onomatopoeic word-percussion. Literature, sexual obsession, farting, incest, philosophy, grammar, cabbages, Nazi death camps and the Torrey Canyon disaster were all considered perfectly reasonable subject matter for his songs, which were whistled in the street and printed in poetry books that were studied in universities. And yet on this side of the Channel, Gainsbourg is really known for just one song: his 1969 number one hit with Jane Birkin, Je T'Aime . . . Moi Non Plus.

"There's a trilogy in my life," said Gainsbourg, "an equilateral triangle, shall we say, of Gitanes, alcoholism and girls - and I didn't say isosceles, I said equilateral. But it all comes from the background of a man whose initiation in beauty was art." Brigitte Bardot - or BB, as the French call her - was the actress for whom the term "sex kitten" was invented. Bardot was signed by Gainsbourg's record company, Philips, in 1962, and she had already released two singles that her labelmate had written before they were both booked to appear on Sacha Distel's primetime Saturday night TV show. It was 1967, two months after the so-called Summer of Love, and Gainsbourg fell for BB mightily. She was, Distel said, "the dream of Serge's life".

It must have been a dream come true to find that Bardot was attracted to him too, and that their rendezvous should happen just as her second marriage was on the rocks. She invited him to appear on her Le Bardot Show, and what started as a working relationship soon developed into a love affair. It was a discreet one to start with: unlike Gainsbourg, Bardot had a horror of press attention. Initially they met furtively at friends' apartments, but then threw caution to the wind and allowed the paparazzi to snap them at all the top nightspots or in Bardot's convertible Triumph Spitfire (with Bardot at the wheel as Gainsbourg couldn't drive), gliding through a Paris plastered with photos of BB in thigh-high boots and black leather mini-skirt straddling a motorbike - an advertisement for her latest Gainsbourg-penned single, Harley-Davidson.

On the Le Bardot Show, the stream of Gainsbourg classics inspired by his new love (or demanded by her producers) were performed by the pair in front of outlandish sets of the cod-psychedelic variety that you only ever saw on 1960s TV shows. For Comic Strip, for instance, Bardot was made up as a black-wigged Barbarella character, in thigh high black boots and surrounded by bright "comic-book" balloons bearing "Zip! Pow! Wiz!" exclamations. For Bonnie and Clyde, Gainsbourg played the part of Clyde with shoulder-holster and cigarette, while BB, in a long skirt, short wig and beret, was his loyal moll.

Bonnie and Clyde was the title track of Gainsbourg and BB's album together, released in 1968. It was one of a pair of songs Gainsbourg had written in the space of a night following a disastrous early date with Bardot. Struck dumb with either nerves or alcohol, his usual wit deserted him, the evening was a flop and he thought he had blown it. But Bardot phoned the next day and demanded as a penance that he write her "the most beautiful love song you can imagine". In fact he wrote two - Bonnie and Clyde and Je T'Aime . . . Moi Non Plus.

Late one night in the winter of 1967, Gainsbourg and Bardot went into a dimly lit studio in Paris and recorded Michel Colombier's arrangement of Je T'Aime in an intimate two-hour session. The two singers were squashed into a small, steamy glass booth; engineer William Flageollet witnessed what he described as "heavy petting". Word leaked to the press that it was an "audio vérité" recording, with the Sunday paper France-Dimanche reporting that the four minutes and 35 seconds of "groans, sighs, and Bardot's little cries of pleasure" set to almost churchlike organ music gave "the impression you're listening to two people making love".

The next thing the journalists did was call up Bardot's husband and ask him what he thought of it. His reply made the next day's headlines - "Furious Gunter Sachs Demands the Single Be Withdrawn" - something that Bardot's agent was agreeing to behind the scenes. Bardot was about to star with Sean Connery in Shalako, released in 1968, and it was not a good time for a scandal (in any case, Bardot hated scandals). She wrote Gainsbourg a letter, pleading with him not to release the record. Gainsbourg protested: "The music is very pure. For the first time in my life, I write a love song and it's taken badly." But he had witnessed the public's love-hate relationship with Bardot, and put the tapes in a drawer. They would stay there until 1986 when she finally gave permission for their "sublime" version of Je T'Aime, as Gainsbourg described it, to come out."Well, we all know Bardot is an idiot," grunted Marianne Faithfull of the original decision to proscribe the song. "Of course when Gainsbourg had her, she was in peak condition, tip-top form - but always very conformist." Gainsbourg had later asked Marianne to do the song with him. "Hah! He asked everybody," she said - including the actress-singers Valérie Lagrange and Mireille Darc (Alain Delon's ex-wife).

The affair ended and Bardot went back to her husband. Gainsbourg busied himself recording and meeting film commitments. For the film Slogan, released in France in 1969, it was decided that an English actress was needed. Jane Birkin - "a young actress with that perfect 1960s Swinging London look: long, ironed hair, big eyes and coltish body shoehorned into a belt-sized mini-skirt and endless thigh boots" - got the part. Initially, the two did not get on. An evening out in Paris was planned to break the ice.

> autres photos de bardot dans les pages "bardot" more bb in thigh boots in the "bardot" pages of this site